Branch 50 (Wellington) NZART – Known as the Wellington Amateur Radio Club
Our final shed workshop session for the year was held on Sunday 5 December from 1pm – 3pm at John ZL2JPM’s QTH at 9 Ramphal Terrace in Khandallah.
John ZL2JPM talked in more detail about his portable microprocessor controlled QRP mag loop antenna that he briefly introduced to us at the October meeting. John won the annual Blackwood Cup for 2021 based on this entry.
The 2021 Wellington Draft District Plan is out for feedback from residents and organisations. Branch 50 NZART will be responding to the draft District Plan, as we have done so in the past. The plan gets updated once every 10 years, so this is our opportunity to make sure that the plan reflects the benefits of amateur radio in our community (e.g. through support for emergency communications) while addressing potential adverse impacts of “amateur radio configurations” on neighbours and the wider community.
A draft submission can be found below. This will be discussed and refined prior to submission (due no later than 14 December 2021). Club members are asked to send suggestions for amendment of the submission to the Committee (committee@zl2wb.com).
Our November meeting was held on Tuesday 16 November (note that this was a different day to usual) from 1pm – 3pm at The Collective Hub, Johnsonville.
John ZL2XJ and Bernard ZL2BD gave a presentation and demonstration of the KiwiSDR project that will be installed on a quiet receive site not too far away from the city. The equipment has been tested in suburban Wellington this year. The presentation included an overview of the technology and its application, and included a “listen in” on KiwiSDR sites via the internet portal.
The meeting also discussed our draft submission to the Wellington City Council on the Draft District Plan.
Our monthly shed meeting was held at Mike ZL1AXG’s QTH in Churton Park on Sunday 7 November. Two topics were covered:
Bernard ZL2BD gave an update on experiments with receive only magnetic loop antennas including the differences between tuned and untuned loops (See the attached paper) and Mike ZL1AXG talked about his recently acquired MLA30+ Rx loop that can be used in conjunction with the portable Tecsun PL-330 receiver.
Mike ZL1AXG also gave his third talk on the Simple SSB TXCVR. The talk covered construction and testing of band pass filters and low pass filters (See attached powerpoint presentation for more details).
